A collection of Hitchcock character-types trample over each other to win at love in Married Life, a quirky but entertaining period murder farce from Ira Sachs, director of 2005's salute to hard living in Memphis, Forty Shades of Blue. Chris Cooper stars as Harry, an owlish 1940s everyman whose moral scaffolding comes tumbling down when he meets a room-temperature bombshell named Kay — Rachel McAdams, rocking a Kim Novak vanilla scoop — leaving him with the thorny problem of what to do with his inconvenient wife, Pat, played with good humor by Patricia Clarkson. Rounding out the quartet is Richard Langley, Harry's best friend who, despite a last name that implicates him as a center of intrigue, is more of a gregarious mug-lifter in the mold of Cary Grant. It's this performance, Pierce Brosnan's best since Bond, that sells the film's retro-cool more than any other, giving us scenes like the one where Langley only increases his chances with a gal by blowing cigarette smoke in her direction as they flirt.
Needless to say, a rogue like Langley would never let a little thing like lifelong friendship stand in the way of a McAdams-level score (who would?) and he's soon dropping by her nondescript home in the wee hours to bring her books, impinge on her for nightcaps and listen to her tale of woe about being a lonely woman in need of comfort and security. "The trouble with Harry is..." is how Kay begins the sentence in which she finally begins to soften to Langley's pursuit, and that couldn't be less of an accident, as Sachs has lovingly peppered Hitchcock references, homages and memories throughout the picture. One of the more substantial allusions, from Dial M for Murder, is sure to elicit laughter and maybe some applause from audiences, while another moment, in which we see a character furiously digging a grave for a dog that has died, strikes an especially ghoulish note that might have elicited a titter from the master.
The main gag that underlines the film's every action is that Harry, Roosevelt-era man that he is, feels that once he makes the decision to move forward with a life with Kay, doing away with Pat is the option she would prefer, lest she have to go through the horror of divorce and a Harry-free existence for the rest of her days. Having Clarkson, a naturally sympathetic actress, play the role of the spurned woman makes it a bit more complex than if Harry was manacled to a harridan that the audience wanted to see elbowed down a flight of stairs. The resulting dynamic between Cooper and Clarkson, while sometimes stilted by the period dialogue that Cooper is less-than-perfect at delivering, is still an intriguing one. Meanwhile, as Harry dithers, Richard continues to mount a charm offensive against Kay and spins his poor American friend like a top to keep his defenses down.
Precision casting is a necessity for a specialty film like this and Sachs never steps wrong, even where the minor characters are concerned. Australian actor David Wenham is effective as an easily recognizable "tennis pro" type, a serial wife-defiler whose moral compass is wobbly enough to allow him to be drafted into any kind of murder plot you might need him for. Sean Tyson and Ty Olsson also have nice turns as a pair of troublesome coppers who show up just when the hero would most prefer they didn't. The film belongs to the quartet, however, and although this whole picture is inarguably a fluffy affair that would be hard-pressed to justify its existence to a multiplex herd, the dance between the talented leads and Sachs' creative energy establish a baseline of quality that Married Life never sinks below.
READ MORE: Chris Cooper Q&A
